The present invention relates generally to computer systems, and more specifically, to dynamic universal port mode assignment for a general purpose computer system.
Universal interface ports are included on general purpose computers to allow the computers to connect to a wide range of external devices (also called peripheral devices), such as a local area networks, storage area networks, printers, scanners, graphics controllers, game systems, and so forth. Standards have been developed for the general purpose ports, usually referred to as the parallel and serial ports, allowing for the proliferation of different types of device adapters utilizing the standard port protocols to interface the external devices with a host computer system. These standards allow a wide range of different types of device adapters using different operating modes to connect to the computer over the same universal port. The modern computer must therefore be configured to properly identify and route messages arriving on the universal port from different types of device adapters using different operating modes.